Rance Series

[Bohrain]

Oh you are playing blind? I'd recommend looking up the conditions

Spoiler

to unlock part 2 of the story if you haven't unlocked it already.

 

[Jaedar]

Oh you are playing blind? I'd recommend looking up the conditions

Spoiler

to unlock part 2 of the story if you haven't unlocked it already.

I played blind, but I stopped once I got first ending (still trying to not get spoiled too much about stuff I haven't seen). Still, you don't need to look up spoilers for that, the conditions are in the in game achievements menu. I kinda intentionally let helman perish, so it was never in the cards.

 

[Jaedar]

Been a while since Jaedar diary

Spoiler

Playing at 6 CP sure is a lot easier than 0!
Did double clear of zeth on turn 2 no problem, then decided to go for broke and went to helman, and while it took me ~10 tries to kill Babolats foot, kesselring himself took a mere 2 tries (first try he got a lucky kill on rance before his invincibility shield comes back on). And with 5% hp remaining, I didn't even need Hanny zippo!

Pretty sure that's gonna be that for double clears this run, as I'm starting to have issues getting good kills on regular enemies since my xp and card totals are really falling behind. Might try to gather power for a while and get both of La sisters at the same time...
Would have aimed for breakthrough ending, thus making it a 100% perfect revenge run (if I got both sisters), but ofc it's incompatible with early double clear of zeth.

So... grand unification or from the sky? I guess

 

[Jason Liang]

Been a while since Jaedar diary

Spoiler

Playing at 6 CP sure is a lot easier than 0!
Did double clear of zeth on turn 2 no problem, then decided to go for broke and went to helman, and while it took me ~10 tries to kill Babolats foot, kesselring himself took a mere 2 tries (first try he got a lucky kill on rance before his invincibility shield comes back on). And with 5% hp remaining, I didn't even need Hanny zippo!

Pretty sure that's gonna be that for double clears this run, as I'm starting to have issues getting good kills on regular enemies since my xp and card totals are really falling behind. Might try to gather power for a while and get both of La sisters at the same time...
Would have aimed for breakthrough ending, thus making it a 100% perfect revenge run (if I got both sisters), but ofc it's incompatible with early double clear of zeth.

So... grand unification or from the sky? I guess

You can always double Free Cities as well!

I can already guess your next update :D

Note that Kesselring KOs male characters, so unless you were using some other male characters, Rance getting KO'd wasn't luck...

 

[Jaedar]

Note that Kesselring KOs male characters, so unless you were using some other male characters, Rance getting KO'd wasn't luck...

Hmm. I had at least also cordoba on the field, so I guess it could have been 50/50.

I can already guess your next update

Yeah...

Spoiler

The 2nd shot to kill Ray for double suppress is such an rng fest. It probably took some 20 tries, but in the end I got him and with 7% overkill. But there were a lot of reloads from him deciding to defend, or not getting correct elemental weakness on the right turn, or just resisting freeze. Kaoru+Full is a very scary ice combo against bosses.
But I feel a bit dirty for brute forcing it like that, as I don't think my small changes to roster and bonuses had any real effect compared to just getting correct rng.

What's the weird thing you can only get to if you kill Ray on first try? (human enemy icon after a rest point) There's usually no rest points after a kill, and it looks like it's not on the path that actually leads to double suppression, making it even more mysterious.

It's amazing how completely trivial Pi-R is with cordoba and Crane.

I'll probably "have" to aim for great breakthrough now, along with whatever else I need for part 2. Do the conditions stack between playthroughs or do you need to do all of them to qualify? I don't think I will be able to save Hornet this run since I haven't touched Leazas and now I have to do the mandatory story missions to not bad end.

Is whatever you need to do in poppins mission for part 2 hard or is it just beating the map?

 

[Jason Liang]

Note that Kesselring KOs male characters, so unless you were using some other male characters, Rance getting KO'd wasn't luck...

Hmm. I had at least also cordoba on the field, so I guess it could have been 50/50.

I can already guess your next update

Yeah...

Spoiler

The 2nd shot to kill Ray for double suppress is such an rng fest. It probably took some 20 tries, but in the end I got him and with 7% overkill. But there were a lot of reloads from him deciding to defend, or not getting correct elemental weakness on the right turn, or just resisting freeze. Kaoru+Full is a very scary ice combo against bosses.
But I feel a bit dirty for brute forcing it like that, as I don't think my small changes to roster and bonuses had any real effect compared to just getting correct rng.

What's the weird thing you can only get to if you kill Ray on first try? (human enemy icon after a rest point) There's usually no rest points after a kill, and it looks like it's not on the path that actually leads to double suppression, making it even more mysterious.

It's amazing how completely trivial Pi-R is with cordoba and Crane.

I'll probably "have" to aim for great breakthrough now, along with whatever else I need for part 2. Do the conditions stack between playthroughs or do you need to do all of them to qualify? I don't think I will be able to save Hornet this run since I haven't touched Leazas and now I have to do the mandatory story missions to not bad end.

Is whatever you need to do in poppins mission for part 2 hard or is it just beating the map?

... not the update I was expecting but it's coming...

afaik there is no extra reward for beating the hardest version of Lei, just for the challenge I think. Still leads to Pi-R though.
just try to keep Leazas alive with Veteran swords in Prep phase until you get past turn 8, I guess that's obvious. It's just *comical* how lucky Leazas is compared to Helman and Zeth. Silky doesn't even want to fight humans and La Hawzel just wants to read books and manga, what a cutie...
Lei is just a lot easier than La Hawzel... you'll see if you attempt her in Leazas 1. Although it's smarter to go for Silky if you saved Leazas 1 for turn 9. OTOH you might *need* La Hawzel for something...
You might be able to do "By Land" in addition to "By Air" this run... there is one big challenge ahead though, and your order isn't optimal for beating "By Land" (but you can figure it out yourself).
For Poppins path just lose to Redeye on turn 8.
You don't need to achieve everything in one run to unlock part 2. Just as long as you complete each requirement in one of the four "A" ending runs. Not sure if you can get Hornet Rescue to appear without doing Leazas 1 - the wiki says you need either La Hawzel or Silky (from Leazas 1) but iirc you can just do the Satella base phase mission instead, but I'm probably wrong about that.
For "Breakthrough" you have to both Rescue Hornet and have Kayblis capture K-k-kamilla so I'm pretty sure you're locked out of Breakthrough this run.
Did you get Galtia in your turn 2 Zeth clear? That's usually the reason to do Zeth turn 2.

 

[Jaedar]

For "Breakthrough" you have to both Rescue Hornet and have Kayblis capture K-k-kamilla so I'm pretty sure you're locked out of Breakthrough this run.

Yes, that is intetional.
The wiki mentions something that sounds like an optional objective in the poppins mission you get after you do shangri-la, but I may be misinterpreting it.

You don't need to achieve everything in one run to unlock part 2.

Nice. I just need 4 countries safe (should be mostly trivial with 3 double suppressions?) and the "soul administration bureau".

It's just *comical* how lucky Leazas is compared to Helman and Zeth. Silky doesn't even want to fight humans and La Hawzel just wants to read books and manga...

It's almost like it was a mistake to send all the previously enemies, now blackmailed ""allied"" dark lords to the same country...
But yeah it is funny how

Spoiler

For the other 3 countries if you don't deal with them pretty early and pretty effectively, bad stuff starts happening, whereas for Leazas bad stuff happens if you interfere. So I guess the hornet sect remnants really are doing their best to fuck up the invasion, even if it is never explicitly shown. Or perhaps Lia is undermining her armies efforts every time Rance shows up as part of her flirtation game.

Did you get Galtia in your turn 2 Zeth clear? That's usually the reason to do Zeth turn 2.

Yeah, but he's shit, so I don't know why I went to the effort (actually I do, I wanted to ruin medusa asap).

... not the update I was expecting but it's coming...

I tremble in fear.

 

[Jason Liang]

It's TADA! Obviously the country with the glasses wearing princess must be cursed to suffer the most - it's MOE
Not sure why Helman is also picked on though
Probably its to illustrate some philosophical point about how some nations are blessed with perfect rulers and government (Lia and Maris - at least as defined by Machiavelli) while others are burdened by corrupt/ feeble rulers and governments.

 

[Reinhardt]

leazas is pretty much the only invaded country that has any gubmint at all. helman just had civil war, but at least they have some stronk generals, kang of zeth is many speshul, free cities is nest of vipers.

 

[Jaedar]

leazas is pretty much the only invaded country that has any gubmint at all. helman just had civil war, but at least they have some stronk generals, kang of zeth is many speshul, free cities is nest of vipers.

Zeth also had a rebellion like ~2 years ago which uprooted most of their system of government. They also are the only ones who got 2 actually sorta motivated dark lords assigned (Galtia not so much motivated perhaps, but his hobby is ruinous anyway). I therefore also give them a pass.

I did an event that gave me a golden hanny statue, what does that actually do?

 

[Jason Liang]

iirc Hannies will now join you in fighting the Monster Army (you'll suffer less global casualties each turn from now on).

 

[Jaedar]

Was a bit bored but didn't feel like reading Rance X or grinding after mode, so I did some spreadsheeting instead and reached the following conclusions:

Each combo adds +10% damage dealt. So if you are at 5 combo and make an attack, that attack will do 50% extra damage.
Damage dealt seems to very from the listed value by +-20%. So a unit with 1000 strength and a 1X attack will deal between 800 to 1200 damage.
Different sources of damage resistance seems to stack multiplicatively, so two sources of 50% physical resist gives a total of 75% physical resist.

A bit surprised from intuition about combo, it certainly felt more compounding than just 10%, but I guess that might just be the difference from starting at 0% bonus and going to 50% compared to starting at 50% and going to 100%.

I also want to say boosts are 50% extra damage and "critical hit" (必殺) is 100% extra damage?

Spoiler

Also I gave up on trying to double clear Hawzel or doing both la sisters. They have too much hp and I have too shitty characters for doing the finishing blows. So I guess I'm just doing normal Silky. Haven't fought her yet, but the stuff on the wiki is not encouraging for my odds of double clearing

 

[Jason Liang]

Was a bit bored but didn't feel like reading Rance X or grinding after mode, so I did some spreadsheeting instead and reached the following conclusions:

Each combo adds +10% damage dealt. So if you are at 5 combo and make an attack, that attack will do 50% extra damage.
Damage dealt seems to very from the listed value by +-20%. So a unit with 1000 strength and a 1X attack will deal between 800 to 1200 damage.
Different sources of damage resistance seems to stack multiplicatively, so two sources of 50% physical resist gives a total of 75% physical resist.

A bit surprised from intuition about combo, it certainly felt more compounding than just 10%, but I guess that might just be the difference from starting at 0% bonus and going to 50% compared to starting at 50% and going to 100%.

I also want to say boosts are 50% extra damage and "critical hit" (必殺) is 100% extra damage?

Spoiler

Also I gave up on trying to double clear Hawzel or doing both la sisters. They have too much hp and I have too shitty characters for doing the finishing blows. So I guess I'm just doing normal Silky. Haven't fought her yet, but the stuff on the wiki is not encouraging for my odds of double clearing

How close did you get on La Hawzel? I thought she was impossible too at first but she's really the most strategic boss fight, and the most challenging boss fight, in the whole game (maybe in rpg history :D ). If you can get her down to about 20-25% you can probably beat her with an optimal strategy, the right battle bonuses and great luck (which is what it takes). If you are at 10% damage though then yeah, it's too difficult.
The double La Hawzel/ La Saizel fight should be much easier since there's no time limit. Still a tricky fight though since they are flying and immune to both fire and ice.

 

[Jaedar]

The double La Hawzel/ La Saizel fight should be much easier since there's no time limit. Still a tricky fight though since they are flying and immune to both fire and ice.

Yeah, it's possible I could have done it but meh, I'll get it at some other point. All my good damage dealers are fire/ice aligned, so once poison/curse stopped being effective it turned into a megagrind that I didn't feel like doing 5 times to figure it out. Wound up doing normal silky clear instead.
Then I played some more (it's amazing how much faster the game goes when you are skipping most of the dialogue, and don't need to look up cards to see what they do).
So I failed on la sisters, but at least I got Warg.

Spoiler

The warg kill squad. Squid should have been pigu, and rance should have been normal rance so I had ways to actually spend ap but I still won first try (although I had to trigger hanny zippo). Obviously lots of picks could be better, but getting characters to level 51 is nontrivial. Also there's no way I'd have had a full team at 51 if I didn't have wiki info.
Warg was a cool secret boss I think, although I don't really like the rng of 80% physical resist, but thankfully she didn't do it often, especially at the end.
Not sure if I can get grand invasion ending or if I'll have to settle for from the sky. At end of turn 10, I'll have 4 generals still standing + I need to do poppins mission. So Grand invasion seems a bit tenuous if the wiki info is correct.

I was also surprised by the randomness of Arios fights. First playthrough I got from the sea ending without triggering the final fight, this time it happened on turn 8. I assumed they happened according to human kill% or just turn count.

 

[Jason Liang]

I'm astonished that you could beat Warg without Kimchi or La Hawzel! I found Warg very tough but then I didn't have Silky...

Good luck on Grand Invasion but yeah you'd need at least 2 nations to self-liberate, probably 3 since you also need to have enough troops alive so you probably need a turn to recruit more troops. There's two things that you needed to do differently, one is more obvious than the other, but again I'll let you figure it out.

 

[Jaedar]

Good luck on Grand Invasion but yeah you'd need at least 2 nations to self-liberate, probably 3 since you also need to have enough troops alive so you probably need a turn to recruit more troops.

Leazas and Helman both seem to have decided to self liberate on turn 11, so I can have all countries liberated at turn 12... seems good enough? And do poppins on turn 13. We'll see. Worst case I made a save to reload for from the air.

I'm astonished that you could beat Warg without Kimchi or La Hawzel! I found Warg very tough but then I didn't have Silky...

Why would you ever use kimchi when papaya exists? Also La Hawzel is legit bad imo, would never go to the pain of leveling her up for this one fight. Not sure silky was essential (pretty sure I could have replaced her with kesselring and still won), but obviously having attacks that ignore sleep and 20% resist across the board is nice.

 

[Jason Liang]

Kimchi is usually the key to beating Warg! Her auto-heal wakes from Warg's sleep debuff if it procs.
La Hawzel's damage is still very good (since she is Darklords faction). It's not as efficient as Kesselring (not much beats Kesselring) but it's still a good nuke, specifically vs. Warg.

 

[Jaedar]

Kimchi is usually the key to beating Warg! Her auto-heal wakes from Warg's sleep debuff if it procs.

Alternatively, just wait for her to attack and attack back then. Like a proper gentleman.

Turns out I'm like 5k troops short of being able to do invasion AND have a spare turn for poppins. I guess it's time to savescum this so free cities decides to self liberate, freeing up that turn. My real mistake was doing the toushin mission (I thought it was key to getting Hunty, but turns out it's only the two toushin and zeta that are unique to it, and they're all mediocre).

 

[Jason Liang]

Or just do Land Invasion, go back to start of turn 10, do Poppins, and finish From the Air, yeah?

 

[Jaedar]

Or just do Land Invasion, go back to start of turn 10, do Poppins, and finish From the Air, yeah?

Yeah, but then what ending am I going to go for on hard mode playthrough? Breakthrough seems maaaybe doable I guess (2 dark lords on turn 10 should be fine as long as none of them is kesselring).

Edit: seems it is resistant to savescumming, but is it resistant to cheat engine ? Yes.

 

[Jason Liang]

Or just do Land Invasion, go back to start of turn 10, do Poppins, and finish From the Air, yeah?

Yeah, but then what ending am I going to go for on hard mode playthrough? Breakthrough seems maaaybe doable I guess (2 dark lords on turn 10 should be fine as long as none of them is kesselring).

Edit: seems it is resistant to savescumming, but is it resistant to cheat engine ?

"Hard" mode is for card collecting, not for challenge:/
The real hard mode is 0 CP.

 

[Jaedar]

Or just do Land Invasion, go back to start of turn 10, do Poppins, and finish From the Air, yeah?

Yeah, but then what ending am I going to go for on hard mode playthrough? Breakthrough seems maaaybe doable I guess (2 dark lords on turn 10 should be fine as long as none of them is kesselring).

Edit: seems it is resistant to savescumming, but is it resistant to cheat engine ?

"Hard" mode is for card collecting, not for challenge:/
The real hard mode is 0 CP.

I have little reason to doubt my ability to do breakthrough on 0 CP, if I know what's coming and optimize for it and only it

Spoiler

Turn order
1 kalar
2 free cities 1
3 leazas 1
4 helman 1
5,6 mandatory stuff
7 hornet
8 helman 2
9 free cities 2
10 breakthrough against medusa and lexington, which should be a free win. Switch lexington to pi-r if breakthrough lexington is somehow not a complete walkover unlike the normal encounter.
Obviously this route is not getting poppins, and might lose a country (although I doubt it, can keep zeth afloat on support missions). Putting poppins in there instead of free cities 2 would probably make it very hard.

And well, like you said. The beauty of Rance X is that it's pretty good at scaling to your successes. Starting at difficulty 5 instead of 1 seems like it should make the game a good amount harder at start, but no double suppressions will of course lower it over time relative to normal mode and doing lots of double suppression (and double cards probably helps).

But I kinda want to do a "all cards available + hard mode" run anyway I think, and 10 turns feels like not a lot to do it in?

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Finished Dohna Dohna
- Audiovisuals are amazing, true 10/10 , it's difficult to make a game to be more visually appealing. The only who wouldn't rate them that high are some braindead idiots, who think that great graphics means photorealistic ones. Random NPCs in Dohna Dohna have more character than whole games.
- Writing is good, I would rate it as above Daibanchou, but worse than Evenicle if we only consider non-Rance Alicesoft games.
- Narrative is a little chaotic. Technically it's about fighting against a corporation running a company town in cyberpunk setting, but most time is spend focusing on conflicts between gangs and a daily life of human traffickers. The ending feels rushed and I got only an epilogue including the protagonist and waifu, we don't know what happened to other members of Nayuta after the end. There is a hastily added theme about dissent being just a controlled part of the system designed so people may let their steam off, but the game does nothing interesting with it.
- Game is linear, you can get a bad ending or heroine rape scene, but apart from that you are just following linear scenarios.
- Hustling is too simple. You focus on getting positive traits for your prostitutes, and have one whore which no one wants to hire, so your S+ talent don't get a bad trait. Grinding for contraceptives can be a little tedious.
- Combat is too simple, there is positioning that matters mostly for managing damage taken from enemies. Encounters resolutions seems to be based more on characters levels than any tactical prowess. Only boss encounters can provide some challenge.
- It's another AliceSoft game in which you play as not good people, but those who you oppose are way worse.
- Antenna is the best girl. I liked all main girls with an exception of Medico and Alyce.
- I demand for Tsuina to be one of the main girls in future AliceSoft game. She has a smile that melts hearts and she had managed to turn a scene that was supposed to be a horrific rape of one of the heroines into total comedy. Imagine being a henchmen that is trying to be somewhat subtle about torturing a girl, but having his boss laughing maniacally through the whole gangbang. She was more enthusiastic abut the whole thing than any participant. Please AliceSoft bring more Tsuina, I am in love.

 

[abnaxus]

 

[Reinhardt]

above Daibanchou, but worse than Evenicle